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What do you meme? 2015’s most confusing political graphics

As the year draws to a close, it’s become customary to be bombarded with listicles of all the things you may have missed through the preceding 12 months.

In the spirit of the season and with absolutely no sense of irony, we present a selection of this year’s most confusing political graphics. Some of them may have been made last year, but it’s Hogmanay, so get over it.

As with most years, a lot happened in 2015, and most of it was immediately forgettable. Thankfully, though, the scholars of the future won’t just have to rely on what the biased MSM recorded in the annals of this year, because thanks to the internet, pretty much anyone with a poor grasp of Adobe Photoshop and/or the pressing political issues of the day can get in on the action. So it came to be that 2015 passed in a pixellated whirlwind of terrible, terrifying and sometimes just perplexing political graphics. Here are some of our favourites.

1. Tommy and the Giant Peach

James and the Giant Peach is a popular Roald Dahl fantasy about a small child who crawls inside a giant peach and makes friends with some creepy crawlies. Tommy Sheridan is a giant tangerine who crawls about the gutter of Scottish politics and is friends with a lot of creeps. He also really wants your second vote on the peach ballot in the 2016 Holyrood ballot.

2. Bridge Over Troubled Water

Look, it’s the famous 56, standing in front of a Forth bridge! What could possibly go wrong???!!!

3. Ciao Bella

Everything about this meme is incredible: the bloodied knife, the horn-less unicorn, the attack on “arty fary morons”. is this satire?!!? Or was 2015 was the year that the Indy movement betrayed the SNP by scything off its unicorn/occasionally criticising them?

4. How I Learned To Love The Bomb

You can take our bombs from my COLD, DEAD HANDS.

5. Day-Glo Centre

We return to Solidarity and, again, there seems to be a lot going on. Here we have a photograph (taken upside down, with datestamp) of a poster with an already, ahem, “interesting” design. Why?

Perhaps we should be thankful that no peaches are involved.

6. SINCE THEIR PRIVATISATION, THE PUBLIC SUBSIDY FOR THE RAIL NETWORK HAS GONE UP BY 300 PER CENT TO £1.2BN A YEAR.

Catchy stuff from the Cyber-Corbynistas. Extra points for going to the effort of spelling out “per cent”. On a meme.

7. Save Our Hills and Bagpipes

#inspirational

8. Minions

“Minions are small, yellow creatures who have existed since the beginning of time, evolving from single-celled organisms into beings who exist only to serve history’s most villainous masters.”

And apparently the SNP too.

9. The Thinking Woman’s Toattie

A Thousand Flowers braved two fun-packed days (April and September) in George Square to bring you write-ups of the Despair in the Square circus spectacular. While there’s nothing particularly special about this graphic, please direct your eyes to the comment. The thinking woman’s toattie? Really?

10. May the Forth Be With You

No round-up of the year would be complete without this. Sublime.

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Thanks to all of our readers for staying with us (or not) over the course of 2015! We’ll be back with the usual array of news, commentry, moaning, petty gripes, Weekly Wankers, silly pictures and more in 2016.